Hello ladies. I'm a long time lurker who has benefitted hugely from reading posts and I'm now posting for some of your valuable advice.
My darling tiny girl is 7 weeks today, (but was born 3 weeks early) and she's pretty slow at gaining weight, a fact which I'm pretty sure may be compounded by what I think may be diarrhoea - although difficult to tell in a bf baby. The scales which gave her weight at birth were almost certainly wrong - she was a small baby and we were told 7lb 11, but 48 hours later she was weighed and was 6lb 10 - an unfeasibly large weight loss in a very short time for a baby which fed well from the start. I think she was more likely to be just under 7lb at birth. From day 3 she has gained, not lost, albeit slowly. At 5 weeks her personality and nappies changed. My smiley happy baby became fussy and screamy, demanding constant feeding and crying as soon as she came off the breast. She also wasn't sleeping enough in my opinion. At the same time her poo began to smell different, looked a bit darker, more brown rather than yellow, contained mucus, and she began passing only 1 or 2 poos a day instead of several each day. At the time we put it down to a growth spurt and after 6 days of this she seemed to have slowed down the feedings a little, was sleeping better and napping in the day and was more content, although nappies still the same. however she has had another "relapse" over the last couple of days, colicky screaming, soothed only by feeding (so we do that ALL the time) but more screaming within minutes of a feed ending. She really seems to be in pain and the screams break my heart. She gained only 3.5 oz in her very fussy week, and only 1.5 oz last week. My HV is having conniptions over the blooming centiles but my GP put it down to colic and seemed unconcerned about both the weight gain or the runny poo. however, I have just poured the snotty (sorry) contents of her nappy into the specimen jar which I'll have sent to the lab tomorrow and I'm sure she has a tummy bug which just won't shift. Could this be causing her slow weight gain? she is only 7 lb 13 today.
Her feedings, though frequent (every 1 to 2 hours in the day, every 2 to 3 through the night) seem fine, her latch is good, it has been observed by midwives, HVs, paediatricians, lactation specialists and bf counsellors amd pronounced fine! I've had no breast or nipple problems save for a couple of blocked ducts caused by a dodgy bra. aargh! to top it all off, dh has discovered he has shingles this week which has had me worried about her catching chicken pox despite my antibodies from the bf.
please help!!!